God Running is a place for anyone who wants to (or even anyone who wants to want to) love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.

In our journey through the book of Acts we’re picking up the story after 120 of Jesus’ disciples received God’s Holy Spirit. (If you’re interested, you can check out these two previous posts on the book of Acts leading up to where we are today: They Were Bewildered and Don’t Miss Out)

Peter Lifts Up His Voice and Leads

But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words.”

Acts 2:14

These 120, after receiving the Holy Spirit, began to speak to the crowd who had come to observe the feast of Pentecost. This large group had come from all over, so a variety of people groups were represented there and they spoke a variety of languages. God’s Holy Spirit falling upon the disciples caused each person in the crowd to hear the disciples in their native language as the disciples shared the mighty works of God they had witnessed in Jesus. Although some in the crowd didn’t seem to hear them in that way. Those who didn’t hear in their native language mocked the disciples and said they were drunk.

It’s at this point in our passage that Peter stands with the eleven and lifts up his voice to address the crowd.

I’m not going to discuss what Peter said until our next blog post. For today, I just want to point out how the grace of Jesus was present with the eleven who stood with Peter that day. They could have objected. They could have made an issue of Peter taking it upon himself to lift his voice and address the crowd. They could have dredged up Peter’s recent history: “Who put you in charge Peter? You denied the Lord when that girl recognized you as one of Jesus’ disciples. It should be one of us who addresses the crowd today.”

But they didn’t make it a thing. They didn’t behave that way. They recognized that Jesus chose Peter to lead that day.

And Peter said what he said. And as we’ll see in our next blog post: the results were amazing.

“It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge and my job to love.”

Billy Graham

Newly released book by Kurt Bennett, now available on Amazon!

Love Like Jesus: How Jesus Loved People (and how you can love like Jesus)

Love Like Jesus begins with the story of how after a life of regular church attendance and Bible study, Bennett was challenged by a pastor to study Jesus. That led to an obsessive seven year deep dive. After pouring over Jesus’ every interaction with another human being, he realized he was doing a much better job of studying Jesus’ words than he was following Jesus’ words and example. The honest and fearless revelations of Bennett’s own moral failures affirm he wrote this book for himself as much as for others.

Love Like Jesus examines a variety of stories, examples, and research, including:

• Specific examples of how Jesus communicated God’s love to others.
• How Jesus demonstrated all five of Gary Chapman’s love languages (and how you can too).
• The story of how Billy Graham extended Christ’s extraordinary love and grace toward a man who misrepresented Jesus to millions.
• How to respond to critics the way Jesus did.
• How to love unlovable people the way Jesus did.
• How to survive a life of loving like Jesus (or how not to become a Christian doormat).
• How Jesus didn’t love everyone the same (and why you shouldn’t either).
• How Jesus guarded his heart by taking care of himself–he even napped–and why you should do the same.
• How Jesus loved his betrayer Judas, even to the very end.

With genuine unfiltered honesty, Love Like Jesus, shows you how to live a life according to God’s definition of success: A life of loving God well, and loving the people around you well too.

A life of loving like Jesus.

(Kindle, hardcover, and paperback now available on Amazon.)